On vacation in San Diego I ended up at one of my favorite locations, an Apple Store. Turns out with two 5 and a half year olds the Apple store is a mini entertainment center.
Apple’s Photobooth, one of the free little applications you get with all the new Macs, proved a bigger hit than I anticipated. My daughter and her cousin took turns trying out all the possible effects from a Fisheye lens effect to the ‘Light Tunnel’. I had to pull them away to cries of:
“No, Squidy needs to be in the next picture.”
“Please, just one more picture.”
It’s a cute little app that even fakes a flash effect by flashing an all white screen before taking the picture. You wouldn’t expect Photobooth to convince someone to buy a Mac, but subtly it adds to the whole experience you have in the store:
- It entertains two wired 5 year olds for 30 minutes easy.
- It’s so simple there’s no confusion on how the interface works.
- You’re having fun which isn’t often isn’t the case with your typical Dell box at work.
- It gives the shopper a reason to stay with a display machine in the store and walk away remembering how much they enjoyed the cute little photo program on those Macs.
So even if you never use Photobooth at home this little app has helped improve your whole Apple store experience. Clever.